Have you ever considered how odd dance battle films are? First off, have you ever been in a dance battle? Let’s walk that back: Have you ever been dancing? Of course you have, you sly minx. Now, have you ever danced to display anger or superiority? I mean, seriously, who does that? When you go out dancing with friends at nightclub, how often do you get into a fight? Because that’s essentially what dance battles are: contactless fistfights, which is particularly something I am not interested in doing when I’m on the dance floor. Weird.
So, God help us, China has discovered You Got Served. Now, I take it, millions of Chinese kids want to be served, too. Our movie opens in the middle of a Hangzhou arena jam-packed for a dance-off between classic rivals the E-Mark and Street Kings. This is pretty much the Yankees-Red Sox of Chinese dance competitions. E-Mark’s best dancer is a shameless, white-haired primadonna who shows up just in time to take the street back from the kings and then split in his chauffeured Lex-cedes. This all begs the question: is dancing really this big in China?
Meanwhile, our humble fatherless projects kid, Chen Shuo (Yibo Wang) spins on his head for peanuts. His family owns a restaurant that gets no business, but does have an odd collection of wax figures. One day, the E-Mark “coach” (for lack of a better word) Ding Lei (Bo Huang) discovers Chen and drags him back to E-Mark headquarters where they have need for a back-up head-spinning guy cuz the primadonna ain’t exactly a team player.
BTW, if you get served in Chinese, does it come with tea and fortune cookies?
Chen is not part of the You Got Served world … he’s humble; he doubts himself; he works on his craft endlessly; he takes pointers; and, mostly, he doesn’t dance to humiliate. Maybe this is a Chinese thing. Meanwhile, Coach Ding is all up the screenplay’s grill. Writer/director Chengpeng Dong has clearly seen several versions of You Got Served, but has decided not to make the main relationship in the film be either the rivalry between the noob and the primadonna, nor the relationship between the noob and the random would-be girlfriend he meets on the train while spinning on his head.
No, the main relationship in the film is between Chen and his would-be coach, Ding. And Ding is the character we explore the most.
So, let me get this
straight: in a film genre devoted to kick-ass athletic dancing from young people who sneer a lot, you’ve chosen to make your film about a portly middle-aged guy.
Well, to be fair, that did make it a better film than most Served servings. The problem now is you have a dance movie where the main character is a portly middle-aged guy. Yeah, I’m just sure the kids are gonna swarm to it. Maybe this is a Chinese thing.
One and Only presented two characters worth following, which is two more characters worth following than almost any other offering in the genre. The biggest issue is, however, that the genre sucks. No matter how athletic, powerful, or graceful the dancing is, it always comes down to posturing and the dance floor equivalent of street fighting. You can throw in Denzel Washington playing a streetsmart wizened guru who knows the formula to dance victory and it will still be about posturing and passive-aggressive street fighting.
Well, what do I know? The reviews and the ratings seem very positive. I can’t recommend One and Only, but I know a conteintent that can. Maybe this is a Chinese thing.
There once was a dancer named Chen
Who danced so he could earn a few yen*
He got a big break
Doing an inverted shake
It’s so good it will make YOUR head spin
Not Rated, 124 Minutes
Director: Chengpeng Dong
Writer: Chengpeng Dong, Biao Su
Genre: You Got Served dumplings
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Dancers?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Dashers?
*– yes, I know yen is Japanese
